The False Construct of Pristine Wilderness

The human element is always apart of the landscape no matter how pristine people would like to think the wilderness is. We are inseparable from the environment. This is why I am such a skeptic of many environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. When reading their literature they speak of the wilderness being untouched, virgin, unscathed, and pristine. It’s a false construct! It’s almost as if they are saying nobody was here before Columbus set foot in the New World.

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While I am sympathy with your comments concerning the strung up coyote, I don't think that you are representing the views of either Sierra Club or SUWA…the latter wants to protect the remaining what-we-call-wilderness that qualifies under the wilderness act.

Yes, most is not as "pristine" as it was before the Native Americans came here, and even less pristine after the European Americans moved in.

But, if we can protect whats left and qualifies, then it will have a chance to return closer to its pre-human condition.

Yet, because I am in the Utah canyons several times a year, I know that there are areas that few, if any, humans have modified…and what human presence might have been there is no longer.

And, most important, there needs to be places, large places, where the wild families (from little wiggly things in the ponds and streams to the large four leggeds, from moss to plants to trees, from the winged to the crawly/wiggly families.

They are still there (although some are trying to hold on) and what as-close-as-we-can-get pristine wilderness we have, we need to protect…for their sake, if none others.

Sierra Club is a large moderate environmental org that helps on a national level but SUWA is the best org for Utah's wilderness–the best people and the most altruistic.

About Nathan Cowlishaw

This is the photoblog of Pro Photographer, Nathan Cowlishaw (aka Nate Arizona). You can visit his main photography site at, TalkingTreePhoto.com, that also serves as an image archive for this site. Read More…

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